As shown in FIG. 4, a prior art cassette holder in a magnetic recording apparatus has a unitary box-like configuration defined by a bottom plate 11 supporting the entire bottom surface of a cassette C, right and left lateral walls 12--12 and right and left upper plates 13--13 partly covering the upper surface of the cassette C.
In the unitary box-shaped cassette holder 10, however, the bottom plate 11, when dropping the cassette C to a play position, hits or contacts a member on the surface of the tape player such as reel bases or their control driving members, unless the members are located otherwise. In this respect, the prior art cassette holder has a drawback that a certain restriction is imposed to placement of the members and that the height of the recording apparatus is increased if the members are located at lower positions away from the bottom plate 11 of the cassette holder.
Beside this, the box-shaped cassette holder 10 is often deformed by a downward load on it, or a horizontal distortion as shown in FIG. 5 sometimes occurs due to a difference between moving timings of its right and left portions. In these cases, the cassette holder 10 is caught by right and left chassis side walls 14--14 and cannot move smoothly.
Further, smooth movement of the prior art cassette holder is not ensured unless its width is accurate with respect to the distance between the right and left chassis side walls 14--14. This causes a difficulty or nervous attention in its manufacturing process.